My son was fishing a big pond in our neighborhood when I made a discovery. Folks were parking on the highway, jumping the fence and fishing the private property. Ok, I can deal with that...they were having fun, I get it. What I saw next pissed me off beyond belief. One guy had a stringer full of black bass. The folks in the neighborhood paid to stock these and the freeloader was taking them. If this only happens a time or two it is ok, but is this is repeated over and over the pond will stop producing these nice fish. No consideration. I will call the sheriff if I see them again! Am I wrong?

I have the privilege of fishing several private neighborhood ponds and everything I use is barbless and if I see anyone violating the local rules for the pond I know who to call. Also, I do not keep fish from any of the smaller, local municipal and other ponds I fish for exactly what Tom has witnessed.

Not wrong at all. I have a nice little place by me that some locals fish but it's public and now new people are showing up and trashing the place with litter. Beer can,food,minnow bags etc. So now we have to clean up after these idiots or we were told it would be shut down. We have had several people tell us they will do whatever rt hey want to with their trash. Let a fee get away with it and more will show up.

I agree with everything except walking up and taking a mans stringer lol. If they are gonna jump fences, trash the place and say they dont care, I would be cautious and assume they do other stupid things like fight over stringers of fish. I will admit I am on the side of caution in life though when it comes to strangers. Although I do wish I had super hero status and could walk up to anyone like Fishman the super hero and dole out justice every day lol

I was guilty of this when I first moved to Texas. My son and I had caught several fish from another neighborhoods stocked pond and we put them on a stringer to take home. A elderly lady lit our tails up since she was a resident there. I didn't understand at first what the big deal was. We still return there to fish with the barbs crushed and we do a catch and release only. But we have seen people walk in from the road and net and take fish. It makes it so there are less fish to enjoy. I felt bad and changed my habits. But I wonder with some of the people that take the fish if they are starving? At lake Athens we saw a guy take 26 cat fish,some were undersized. But man he was missing most of his teeth and looked like a Hobo.

This should not be allowed. Call the cops. Next time they are there, see if you can get a few other guys to go with you. Me personally, I always carry some sort of knife, not for defense, but for situations just like this. I would walk up, seem like they had a really good catch ans ask them to show me. When they pull the stringer up and out of the water... slice... oops. Sucks for them that I cut the stringer rope.

This should not be allowed. Call the cops. Next time they are there, see if you can get a few other guys to go with you. Me personally, I always carry some sort of knife, not for defense, but for situations just like this. I would walk up, seem like they had a really good catch ans ask them to show me. When they pull the stringer up and out of the water... slice... oops. Sucks for them that I cut the stringer rope.

You do realize though that for smaller ponds especially that keeping a few of the smaller bass is actually beneficial and will make it a much better fishery right? Otherwise eventually all of the bass will become stunted and you wont catch anything over 1-2lbs. Not saying what this guy did was right but more a comment to the fishing with barbs pinched etc is probably a bit overkill IMO.